Snow Globes and Airplanes
by J. M. Flowers
Summary: Sofia dreams of something more; something off the ground.


**AN**: Got the wonderful news tonight that I won't have to choose between ballet and my writing education next year, so I thought I'd celebrate with a bit of Sofia. Fits in somewhere after Tanned and How Little, How Big.

For my own parents, who've also kept me on the ground but given me enough strength to start to flap my wings.

* * *

**Snow Globes and Airplanes**

The snow globes had been on her shelves as long as she could remember. Four globes, each one a symbol of her family. New York was her father - the last trip he took before he died, returning with the biggest snow globe he could find with Rockefeller Center trapped inside of it. Miami was her mami - the last conference she went to before the accident, returning with a beautiful tan and a globe with palm trees all around the base. The most modest of the lot was from her momma, one she'd helped a few children in Malawi make out of glitter and an old glass jar, a princess figurine glued onto the lid.

But hers was only Seattle, only the space needle safe inside the globe, secured and forever stationary. Just like her. She'd never been anywhere else. She was only Seattle, not Malawi or Miami or New York City. She wasn't London or Paris or Rome.

And oh, how desperately she wished to be anything else. Anywhere else. She'd grown up watching her friends disappear for Summers in Colorado, Florida, North Carolina. They'd spent Christmas breaks skiing in Aspen, scuba diving in Hawaii, shopping in Europe. She'd waited patiently for them to return, trying not to dream of soaring across the sky.

Because she was the daughter of survivors. They'd survived a car accident and a plane crash and a shooting. Things that had killed their friends, killed her father and left them frozen in one place.

The excuses were all there: I can't leave my patients for so long; we own the hospital, Sofia, we can't just up and move; I thought you were happy here? No one ever spoke of the fear, the debilitating moments when her momma could barely breathe, let alone climb aboard an airplane.

So they turned down conferences, drove the short jaunt to California for a 'holiday' and laid on beaches that she longed to turn into mountains. She wanted out. Her whole life, she'd been flying away and the past had been tying her back down.

She'd been accepted early into Stanford, the only one on her list within driving distance. Dartmouth had come next, keeping her up late as she researched New Hampshire. Then Brown in Rhode Island, Cornell in New York, Princeton in New Jersey. Her options had been endless, grand.

All of them on the other side of the country.

She'd just mentioned the 3,000 miles between Seattle and Hanover, New Hampshire one night, watching how her momma had wrung her hands and that had been enough to tell her to choose Stanford. To stay close and love them and never, ever set foot on an airplane.

But then she'd gotten another letter. Another acceptance, from her first choice school. That just happened to be in Southampton, England. Almost 5,000 miles and a plane ride away from her mothers. Just as good a school as any of the others, just as wonderful an institution as Stanford was.

Only, Southampton was her dream. Studying abroad, being an hour train ride outside of London, living in Europe where everything wasn't shiny new and instead had a history.

A history that wasn't riddled with stories of loss.

She wanted out of Seattle, desperately. She wanted to sit on a plane and get off on the other side of the world knowing that her mothers' fear hadn't destroyed her. Hadn't ruled her life and kept her on the ground for all of eternity.

At eighteen, she was ready to be someone else. She was ready to be more than their legacy.

"I got another letter," she announced over breakfast, nudging at the remains of a blueberry pancake with her fork.

Her momma had been the cheering party for each new delivery of mail, tossing in the 'yays' and 'congratulations' wherever possible. She'd loudly declared her daughter a genius. This time, she stilled. "I thought you got letters from all the schools you applied to?"

"I applied to another one."

Her mami stepped up, filling the terse silence. "What school, Sof?"

She took a second to breathe, pushing her plate away from herself on the island so she could focus. Because this could destroy them, tearing apart their easy calm, their relaxed demeanor. It had been too simple thus far, planning the next year of her life; her friends spoke of haggard fathers and crying mothers and she'd seen none of that. But this? This could do that. This could make the rest of her year at home impossible.

"Southampton University," she whispered.

"Southampton?" her mami repeated, toying with the word, trying to place it on the map of America stowed away in her head.

There wouldn't be a spot for it. "It's in England."

Her momma froze, fork dropping from her hand and clanging loudly as it hit her plate and then bounced off, skittering a path across the island. Her mami put her hand on it, stopping its course.

"England?" her momma asked.

"That's fantastic, Sofia," her mami tried, but the nervous jitter of her momma was enough to steal the stage. The fervent wringing of her hands was enough to pull the focus.

"That's across the ocean," her momma mumbled, "A plane ride away. You'd have to get on a plane to go to school, and to come home. For Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break." She stood, uncertain and pacing out the anxiety in response. "No," she muttered, all that calmly trained surgeon bullshit not bothering to make an appearance. "You can't go. You can't get on a plane."

"Arizona," her mami pleaded, trying to pull her away from the panic attack with a hand set in the small of her back, but it was no use. The click of her plastic foot against the wood floors screamed that loud enough for the whole world to hear.

"I wasn't asking," she murmured, trying desperately to squelch the anger searing at the center of her chest, heavy fists pounding on her sternum in anticipation of escape. Because she wouldn't let them clip her wings again. She wouldn't let them talk her out of this, not like her mami did when she wanted her license at sixteen. The road was calling her name, and she was more than ready to be on it. "I'm going to Southampton."

The fear morphed into tears on her momma's face, her mami clutching at her frantic wife in an effort to quell the severe anxiety that still bubbled to the surface at the mention of the sky. Almost two decades later, it still controlled them.

She turned away, the wrench of fear nauseating her. She wanted to escape into her room and suddenly be a thousand miles away. She wanted to be done with the little apartment that they'd spent too long making work. She wanted to be away from the incessant sound of sirens, away from the knowledge that they'd be pulling her mothers out of bed in the middle of the night. She wanted accents and far away and something akin to Peter Pan. She wanted her own patch of Neverland.

"Why?" her mami whispered, tugging her loose from her reverie. "Tell us why."

Her mind flashed back to the Wikipedia article she'd absorbed, the pictures of Southampton's Town Walls and Bargate, the Titanic Memorial and the Tudor House. She wanted to tell them about the architecture, the history of the city, the county of Hampshire. She wanted them to know about the theatres, the shopping, the sports, and the Oceanography Centre. She wanted to tell them everything she'd learned about the area, about the school. But all she could think of was the one phrase that had been screaming in her head for as long as she'd thought it.

"I don't want to live your fears."

Her momma sucked in a breath. Her mami, for her part, almost seemed to be proud; aware of the strong, independent young woman they'd raised. It would be her mami, if anyone, who got on a plane with her, who went to see her at school.

But it was her momma who surprised them all: "Let's talk about it."

Maybe it wouldn't destroy them. Maybe she wouldn't just be Seattle forever.

Her shelf really needed some more snow globes; maybe she'd get to make that happen.


End file.
